SOME thief with taste has just meticulously removed a magnificent wood carving of the lion representing St Mark from our pulpit at St Michael's in the City of London.

Now right at the front there's only a hexagonal hole like a scar. It's a proper mess.

The pulpit, the pew ends and many other parts of St Michael's were carved by the brilliant 19th century craftsman William Gibbs Rogers, whose work can also be seen at Kensington Palace and Carlton House. Rogers was a pupil of the celebrated master Grinling Gibbons.

I'm furious, of course, and the whole congregation with me. But beyond fury, there's bafflement. I mean what kind of person - if "person" is the word I'm looking for - defaces church interiors and removes fine artworks of spiritual significance? The theft was well-executed too, so you might say the figure of the lion was exquisitely stolen and almost a work of art in itself. But do these church thieves take our treasures and sell them on or what?

Or perhaps they belong to a band or guild of thieves who gather at one another's houses for drinks and canapes and boast, "And here's one I stole from St Paul's. . . it contrasts nicely, don't you think, with the candlestick I nicked from Westminster cathedral. . ."

OVER the holidays, I watched a video of the old film First of the Few, the thrilling biography of RJ Mitchell who designed the Spitfire. An old black and white movie, it knocks spots off the hitech glossy modern productions when it comes to the aerial action scenes.

Mitchell drew his inspiration for the Spitfire from watching birds in flight - something as un-mechanical and natural as that. And by general consent he achieved his aim and created the most beautiful aircraft ever seen.

But there's a deep and anxious moment in First of the Few and it's when Mitchell visits Nazi Germany in the 1930s in connection with his involvement with air races. The German aircraft manufacturers invite him to a private view of their new planes. And Mitchell says politely that he'd be delighted, because he knows they have been making some fine gliders. Under the terms of the Versailles Treaty after the First World War, the Germans were not allowed to build military aircraft.

The Germans smiled at Mitchell and said: "Oh and we've got better than gliders, of course!" Yes, they had. They were secretly building fighter planes such as the ME109 - the rival to the Spitfire in the Battle of Britain. Mitchell knew at once that he had to come straight back to England and prepare our air defences. I thought of that scene when it was announced the other day that Iran has succeeded in enriching uranium - a necessary process if you want to make atom bombs. Of course, Iran says firmly that it has no such intention and that the enrichment process is just the next step in the peaceful pursuit of atomic energy.

And as my old mum used to say: "And the band played Believe Me if You Like!"

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran is a sincere religious fanatic who believes his destiny is to provoke a crisis which will reveal the so-called "Hidden Imam" and lead to the destruction of the enemies of Islam. He has declared publicly that Israel "should be wiped off the face of the map". Jack Straw says that any thought of a pre-emptive strike against Iran's nuclear installations is "just nuts".

But then Jack Straw would have believed the Nazis were just making gliders.